If February didn’t exist, who would dare to invent it? But since it does, Friends of Music at Guilford, now in its 49th season, has chosen the 21st of that unloved month to present LIGHT AND VARIABLE: Music to Defy February featuring the woodwind quintet Variable Winds in a program designed to take your mind off it.
“Light” may not be the first word you’d connect with Gustav Mahler, but the settings he made early in his career of poems from the folk collection “The Youth’s Magic Horn” are exactly that: tuneful, witty, and charming. Arranged by Trevor Cramer for wind quintet are three songs about music, “Rhine Legend,” “Who Thought Up This Little Song?” and “In Praise of Higher Understanding,” in which a singing contest between a cuckoo and a nightingale is judged by a donkey. (Think “Bavarian Idol.”)
Irving Fine’s “Partita” is one of the (yes) finest pieces in the wind quintet repertory. Fine, who taught at Brandeis University and died of heart disease at age 47, was associated with the mid-twentieth century “Boston School” of composers. Like his colleagues Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland, he wrote in a style noted for transparency, lyricism, and rhythmic vitality.
Claude Arrieu, who lived almost twice as long as Fine (1903 to 1990), was a prolific composer in all genres, including opera and film music. The adopted name is misleading: she was born Marie-Louise Simon. The music, on the other hand, isn’t misleading at all; it is thoroughly French, redolent of Parisian streets, salons, and music halls. In her lively “Suite en quatre,” the missing instrument is (ironically) the French horn. Variable Winds performed another of her works, Quintet in C, at a FOMAG house concert a couple of years ago.
If you appreciate symmetry, you’ll be pleased that the program ends as it began, with three songs. These, however, are by the eccentric American tunesmith Alec Wilder. He wrote in classical genres (including at least a dozen works for wind quintet) but is better known for his popular songs, championed by such notables as Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday. Vermont composer/oboist James Adams has arranged three of them for wind quintet: “I’ll Be Around,” “Is It Always Like This?” and “Blackberry Winter.” His arrangements replace the oboe with its big sister, the English horn, for a richer, gentler sound.
Members of the Variable Winds are residents of Southern Vermont and the Pioneer Valley, all performing with one or more orchestras and other chamber ensembles in the region.
The performance of “Light and Variable” is on Saturday, February 21, at 4:00 p.m. at Guilford Community Church, 38 Church Dr., in the village of Algiers, near the Guilford Country Store, just over a mile from Exit 1 off I-91. A hearty teatime reception follows. Admission is $10.
For further information, contact the FOMAG office at (802) 254-3600 or office@fomag.org.
